OOR Funding Workshop Rethinking Funding Strategy Ken Baclawski

OOR Funding Workshop: Rethinking Funding Strategy Ken Baclawski Northeastern University 22 August 2012 1

Current Funding Status I NCBO Bio. Portal Code Well funded NIH center Specialized for biomedical ontologies Centralized server KEEPER Project 22 August 2012 Funded as part of another NIH project Handles gatekeeping, workflow and policy enforcement Not integrated with Bio. Portal code 2

Current Funding Status II SOCop OOR Funded as part of an NSF project Contains 27 ontologies Contributed code? Other projects 22 August 2012 Support for OOR instances Does anybody know of any other projects that explicitly mentioned OOR in the proposal? 3

Funding Opportunities There are many funding strategies. Seek project funding (e. g. , an agency grant) Incorporate (e. g. , as a consortium) There are many potential sources of project funding. Government Agencies Charitable Foundations For-Profit Corporations Incorporation strategy 22 August 2012 Requires a business plan A funding model is the central part of the plan. 4

Summary of Experiences The rest of the slides discuss experiences with proposals for funding the OOR. The focus is on project funding: 22 August 2012 This is our only experience so far. Any form of funding requires making a case to funding sources. 5

Obtaining Project Funding Merit This has multiple components Compatibility with Funding Source Mission Overall funding source mission Specific program mission Funding Source Evaluation Process 22 August 2012 Considerable variation among sources Most sources do not evaluate merit separately from mission compatibility. Vaguely worded mission statements are common. 6

Merit Typical merit categories: Significance Investigators Innovation Approach Environment Auxiliary sections of the proposal 22 August 2012 Budget with justifications Resource sharing 7

Results of Past Proposals I Significance The importance if completed successfully Our proposals have outstanding scores on this criterion: “critical” “fundamental” Investigators 22 August 2012 The personnel are well suited to the project. Our proposals have scored highly on this criterion. Possible weakness: graduate students and other personnel are not well specified. 8

Results of Past Proposals II Innovation The novelty of the project Difficult to make a case for novelty of OOR Including OOR as part of another project is one possible solution. Approach 22 August 2012 What the project will do. Our proposals have been weak on this criterion: too much emphasis on requirements, too little on tasks. This is solvable. 9

Results of Past Proposals III Environment Equipment, software, etc. Our proposals have been very good on this criterion. This is seldom an important criterion for software projects. Budget 22 August 2012 What the project will cost and team member responsibilities Our proposals have been weak on this criterion mainly due to the lack of detailed approach. This is solvable. 10

Results of Past Proposals IV Resource Sharing Plan for sharing what is produced Our proposals have been very good on this criterion because it is an open source project and the investigators have experience with open source. Long-term support is a potential weakness. Compatibility with Mission This was one of the worst aspects of our proposals. Infrastructure development is seldom fundable. 22 August 2012 Including OOR as part of another project is one possible solution. 11

OOR as Subproject Advantages One way to address some criteria. Disadvantages 22 August 2012 Must be well integrated with project objectives to avoid an adverse impact on evaluation. Support for the main project dictates design choices. Low priority within the main project 12

OOR as Consortium Advantages Disadvantages Alternative solution to some criteria Effectively a subproject of many projects, so has the same disadvantages. Different domains have different requirements. How much experience do we have for such an approach? 22 August 2012 13

Suggestions Funding source Agency Program Domain for a subproject Target domain Must be other than biomedical and geospatial Potential investigator/team Project objectives Other ideas 22 August 2012 14